Category Archives: Seriously?

I’m dashing this off quickly, so I won’t be linking to anything (I’m strangely and inconsistently particular about the articles to which I link, and I suspect that finding the right articles for this post would take more time than I have at the moment).

Arizona has had a use tax for several years but has never really enforced it. If you’re wondering, “use taxes” are applied to online purchases from out-of-state companies that don’t charge state sales taxes on the item(s) being purchased. For example, if I were to order a T-shirt from a company in Wisconsin and the Wisconsin-based company didn’t charge me sales tax on that T-shirt, Arizona then has the right to charge a “use tax.” The state has never enforced this tax.

But they’re going to start. Any time I order anything online, I’m going to have to save the receipts and pay taxes on it at the end of the year.

Arizona’s government is predominantly Republican. Arizona’s Republicans generally are of the “NO NEW TAXES EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES EVER DAMMIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” variety. But this tax hits poor and middle class people harder than upper class people, and the use tax law, though as yet unenforced, is not new, so they can pretend that they’re not raising taxes.

Pima County, Arizona, has a temporary ban in place on the sale and use of fireworks, due to the fact that we’ve been under drought conditions for a long time and have recently had the largest wildfire in the state’s history and the arguably the most dangerous fire in its recent memory.

A couple of citizens and a fireworks retailer sued the county, claiming that the ban was too broad and the county should have isolated areas that were less prone to fire, so that law-abiding citizens could still use their legally-purchased fireworks. The judge said that was unworkable, but that the sale of fireworks should not have been prohibited. (Why buy fireworks if you’re not going to use them? Is anyone buying fireworks before July 4 really going to wait until New Year’s Eve to use them?)

Something tells me that if their legally purchased and illegally used fireworks were to cause a major wildfire, the complaining citizens would be disinclined to pay for the damages.